#and complicated doesn't necessarily keep him alive. and alive is the bare minimum after all

[tiredassmage]

Hi hello you reblogged that love ask game and I am curious about Nikihlus so... 1 and 2 for him?

oohhhhhh, I may have gotten so excited to be asked about Niki that I'm putting off sleep (oops) for it. The guy's just fascinating to me, okay?

[ A Short Ask List About Love ]

1. Does your OC have a hard time distinguishing between love and lust?

Perhaps... yes and no. Real, affectionate love has been rare, few, and far between for Nik, to the point that he'd more than likely consider it a foreign experience, and he's... an incredibly cautious man on his best days. On his worst, he's about as close to paranoid as my agents come.

But it's... not so much a distinguishing issue, I'd say, as it is... Nik has not built a life looking for love - or even affection. The short version of the story of many of his scars is that the one place he felt a strong sense of belonging outside of his own identity left him to die well before Imperial Intelligence found him. That incident - where he was left to drag himself back in stripped, bloody, beaten pieces to a master he thought valued his loyalty enough to bear the punishment of silence - was even likely part of what attracted Intelligence to him.

That said, it's... not a clear difference to him, necessarily. It does not stand as starkly as oil atop water, but it registers as... different. Something generally subtle that is defined by intent, else he'd call outright declarations of affection misguided lust - or plain misguided infatuation in general. And infatuation is not love.

It is foreign in taste, when someone tries to lay it gently over his chest like a hand feeling for a heartbeat humming beneath the skin. Much of him baits at the edges of it like a starved coyote nervously testing the edges of the shadows that separate it from the farmer's fields. He does not see much readily apparent in himself that might drive someone to love.

It's a word he's very tight-lipped about dropping. He'd scowl at implying it as something precious and delicate, like it has to be protected behind his teeth. The truth is that he guards his own heart by being so reluctant to name it. The fact that he has two of them makes them no easier to reach, if you're really looking to get past the cool-aired shrugs and narrowed eyes that prowl jests and sideways comments about his work.

In the one relationship I've seen him consider using the term, it was years before it felt comfortable in his mind, let alone him considering letting it sink to his tongue - and longer still for him to actually release it from there. Everything is temporary and almost always in-motion in his life.

Lust is easier that way. It comes without expectations and attachments inherently interwoven with it. He's served Hutts and crime lords, fellow assassins and Imperial Intelligence well aware of his physical ability to charm, if need be. Flesh is warm when blood still flows in the veins and arteries beneath, and that is a comfort in the cold expanse of an ever-changing galaxy that will keep turning whether you care for it or not. A little bit of fun is an ease to the repetition and dull monotony of brutish claims of strength that can be so easily overtaken with a sniper rifle.

He'd call the free use of such language by most foolish. But in the rare instances he's found it directed at him with any measure of softness, it may have drawn the specter of a softer smile across his lips, briefly.

Nikihlus has killed for a lot less than love enough to consider himself lucky it hasn't killed him in return.

There's a part of him that longs silently for the idea that maybe, one day, he won't have to threaten to snarl in a way that pulls his lips back over his teeth, that makes him feel like he raises hackles to fill in the reputation he's carefully crafted for...

Love maybe wouldn't feel so much like canines bared and ribs sharpened into splinters. But it'd have to get close enough first. And at that range? It could kill him.

And he's always preferred to be paranoid, but alive. Isolated, perhaps... but at least he breathed to tell the story. It might feel nice if he didn't have to.

2. Is your OC at all romantic themselves? Or is romance something they expect others to perform for their benefit?

As you might've guessed, there's... quite a bit of work to get that close. But I also think Nik's got a softer pair of hearts in there than he'd like anybody to know.

His idea of a romantic lunch is to find a street food vendor and then perch up on the rooftops for a view, but he'd like it. The idea that love can be lazily laying against a partner's chest listening to the rise and fall of their breath through their chest. That life could be so... unhurried. Unworried. Not bothered by keeping constant vigil for a knife in the back.

Now, part of the many layers to get to those ideas inside of Nik's heart is a lot of him more readily believing that everyone has an angle, and he's little more than a pawn who always needs a back door and a torch ready to drop on the bridge to keep himself from getting (too) hurt (again). Fleeing at the smoke from signal fires has kept him alive - and alive's kind of the prerequisite to feeling like shit or happy.

By the same token, Nik would find most foolish if they looked for any amount of time at his history - if they know any of it - or how he presents himself as a drifter and a killer for hire and thinks he sticks around. That he's got any sense of loyalty beyond what you pay him to have.

But it's not impossible. If you stick around. He'll be suspicious at first. Then curious.

Then you might actually get somewhere.

But underneath all the carbon scorching and durasteel and suspicious molten eyes is... honestly I think a pretty heavy romantic. At least in the sense that Nik's a little fonder of the idea of not having to be such a skittish, flighty creature than he'd ever like to easily let on. And his ideas of company are not grand. They're about sharing moments, and time together. Not particularly having to do a whole lot, but slowing down enough to hear yourself breathe in between the hustle of nightlife and the glare of holosigns. That there's a kind of beauty to all of that chaos - and that, for better and worse, it's the kind of seedy little shithole slice of the galaxy that he knows best, and that'll probably always feel a bit like home to him.

He's made himself independent because he was shown it was the only way to stay alive, and a gentle touch that would say to the contrary against his cheek would go a long way in showing him it doesn't have to be that way forever. And the message would be important.

He wants to hear that more than he's ready to admit. More than he's willing to admit without a lot of work to show him he's not going to get a knife stabbed through the cracks if he shows them.

And Nik's fairly good at casual, before all of this. Where some of it sort of leaks through the cracks, anyways. Because for someone who preaches that the lessons are hard, and you need to learn them fast with thick skin or they'll flay you alive and you'll probably deserve it, he... isn't without a kind of sympathy. With a sense that it's a harsh life, and harsh lessons, and it maybe doesn't have to be.

But Nik is rarely the kind to stick his neck out for someone without having something to gain from it. Or at least cover his losses from doing so.

So I suppose the short answer to both is that it's... complicated. And he guards a lot of his actual feelings on the matter behind a persona of being fairly easy-going. He plays into the mask he's made as Snakebite. People expect a certain kind of charisma and danger from a man like him - and sometimes that's even fun for him to indulge.

But it's also a lonely life, and Nik's not getting any younger. And living the way he has has a way to make the years feel a bit longer and more empty than they may have physically looked on the surface. He's not blind to that.

And on his best days, he doesn't exactly... truly want to be. Whatever he may say to the contrary.